Sheriffs in the Colorado county where the Club Q shooting took place have refused to enforce 'red flag' laws and the county declared itself a 'Second Amendment preservation county'

• The suspect of the Colorado Springs shooting may have evaded the state's "red flag" laws, per AP.
• Colorado's "red flag" law went into effect in 2020.

The Saturday shooting at an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs occurred in a county where officers refused to exercise the full scope of the state's red flag law, which allows law enforcement or family members to petition a judge to temporarily seize an individual's firearms if they pose a significant risk.

A little more than a year before the attack, police responded to a call that the 22-year-old suspected shooter threatened his mother with a homemade bomb in June 2021, The Associated Press reported, prompting a response from a bomb squad and crisis negotiators.

The incident could have been grounds to trigger the state's "red flag law" — or Extreme Risk Protection Orders — which went into effect in January 2020, eight years after the mass shooting inside a theater in Aurora, Colorado.

However, the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, which has jurisdiction in Colorado Springs, has previously refused to exercise the full extent of the gun restraining measure, and the county declared itself a "Second Amendment preservation county" in 2019, along with more than half of Colorado's counties, according to a list compiled by KUSA, a Denver-based local news outlet.

The sheriff's office released a statement in response to the Colorado law and said that its employees will not petition a judge to take away someone's firearms unless a crime is being or has been committed.

"A member of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office will not petition for an ERPO or TRPO (Temporary Risk Protection Order) unless exigent circumstances exist, and probable cause can be established pursuant to 16-3-301 C.R.S that a crime is being or has been committed," the agency wrote.

The self-imposed policy is more restrictive than the scope of the state's measure. According to the bill's language, law enforcement or relatives only have to provide "evidence that a person poses a significant risk to self or others by having a firearm in his or her custody or control or by possessing, purchasing, or receiving a firearm." It does not mean the individual must have committed a crime.

A spokesperson for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office and the county did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

The AP found that there were no public records of charges filed against the suspect, who is now accused of killing 5 people and injuring at least 25 others at Club Q, after the threat against his mother. There were also no records of relatives or police filing a petition to use the state's "red flag" law for the suspect following the incident, The AP reported.

It's difficult to determine if the "red flag" law could have stopped the mass shooting on Sunday.

Veronica Pear, a researcher in the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, who studied red flag laws in California, previously told Insider that, anecdotally, the measure has been effective in disarming people who have made threats of mass shootings.

But one issue with the effectiveness of "red flag" laws comes from law enforcement's unwillingness to utilize the law.

"There can be cultural barriers within police departments," Pear said. "In Colorado, we saw sheriffs coming out and saying that they would refuse to petition for these orders."

An analysis by The AP revealed that Colorado had one of the lowest rates of "red flag" law usage compared to the 19 states and the District of Columbia which have their own versions of gun restraining orders.

In March 2021, a gunman killed 10 people at a Boulder, Colorado grocery store. The suspected shooter was previously was placed on a one-year probation for attacking his high school classmate, CNN reported.

Since the incident was a misdemeanor and not a felony, it did not prevent the shooting suspect from purchasing a weapon legally under Colorado law.